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The collection gathers lyrical sequences and sonnets in a confessional voice that probes modern female identity, desire, and social performance. One extended autobiographical sequence composed of many thirteen-line terzine reads like a novel without plot, tracing appetite, flirtation, indifference, and the exhilaration of urban fashion and nightlife; other poems, including more compact sonnets, record earlier romantic suffering and youthful passions. The speaker juxtaposes classical female archetypes with a contemporary Parisian model to explore ambivalence toward love, liberty, and reputation, using vivid sensory detail, psychological introspection, and recurring images of gaze, costume, jealousy, and theatricalized seduction.
E tu, Capriccio, genïetto rosa
che svolazzi con ali di farfalla
e un riso su la bocca desïosa,
talvolta io ti sentii su la mia spalla
lieve posare e un'avida parola
colsi, al riparo dell'aluccia gialla.
Fu qualche sera, quando d'una sola
fiamma bruciano i nostri occhi e le stelle,
e ci trema la voce, arida, in gola.
Qualche sera in cui sembran così belle
le labbra che si porgono e così
molle l'odor delle rose novelle,
ch'è duopo susurrare un dolce: — sì!